Miles spread out his arms with a gesture that was candour itself.
"I have none to give you. I am cleaned out myself."
"That's a lie!" cried Pound, with a savage oath.
Miles answered with cool contempt:
"Do you think a man clears out with five hundred ounces in his pockets? Do you think he could carry it ten miles, let alone two hundred?"
Jem Pound looked hard at the man who had been his captain in a life of crime. A trace of the old admiration and crude respect for a brilliant fearless leader, succeeded though this had been by years of bitter hatred, crept into his voice as he replied:
"You could! No one else! No other man could have escaped at all as you did. I don't know the thing you couldn't do!"
"Fool!" muttered Miles, half to himself.
"That's fool number two," answered Pound angrily. "Well, maybe I am one, maybe I'm not; anyhow I've done what a dozen traps have tried and failed, and I'll go on failing—until I help them: I've run you to earth, Ned Ryan!"
"Ah! Well, tell me how."